ELB Book Corner: Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: “The Musical Influences on Elections”

I am pleased to welcome Ciara Torres-Spelliscy to the ELB Book Corner, writing about her new book Corporatocracy. This is the second of four posts:

My new book Corporatocracy gave me a chance to look at events in recent elections including 2012 and 2020. A leitmotif is the actions of musicians including Taylor Swift, Psy, Britney Spears, Kanye West, and Pras of the Fugees.

In November 2012 a Malaysian businessman named Jho Low threw himself a lavish birthday party in Vegas.  Britney Spears jumped out of Low’s birthday cake. Low allegedly paid Spears $1 million to sing him “Happy Birthday.”

Two days after the party, the 2012 presidential election took place. Democratic President Obama was reelected. Some of the money supporting Obama’s reelection came from the birthday boy, Jho Low. This was a problem because as a foreign national, Low was allowed spend exactly zero dollars in an American election.

How did Jho Low have the money to throw this lavish Vegas fete and spend millions in the 2012 U.S. presidential election? Because he is accused of being one of the biggest corporate thieves of all time. Jho Low allegedly stole between $4 billion and $5 billion from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Then he allegedly absconded with the money.

The DOJ alleges that Pras was part of a criminal conspiracy with Jho Low. In the DOJ’s rendition of events, Low provided money (allegedly stolen from the Malaysian fund) to Pras, and then Pras used it to support Democratic president Obama’s re-election in 2012 through straw donors. This was illegal, because foreign money is not allowed in U.S. elections. It’s also illegal to spend in an election through straw donors. Low has never been apprehended. Pras was convicted on all counts in a jury trial.

Fast forward to Independence Day 2020, long after the Democratic nomination had solidified around Biden and the Republican nomination around incumbent President Trump, a late entrant took the political stage: Kanye West.

On August 30, 2015, Kanye West declared at the MTV Video Music Awards, “I have decided in 2020 to run for president.” Few took him seriously; most bona fide candidates do not declare they are running five years in advance. But then, on July 4, 2020, West made the announcement that he actually would be running for president. This was also not taken particularly seriously; most candidates don’t announce they are running mere months before an election, either.

West tried to get on the general election ballot in 2020, but his late-breaking campaign missed filing deadlines and turned in petitions that were riddled with flaws. In New Jersey, pages of them appeared to be in the same person’s handwriting. And as Politico reported, “West’s effort to get on the Wisconsin ballot was challenged because his documents were filed one to two minutes after the 5 p.m. deadline.” West did not get on the Wisconsin ballot.

In the end, West was on the ballot in twelve states and received 70,296 votes nationwide. Because of West’s slapdash campaign, he was not on the ballot in any of the swing states that ended up deciding the 2020 presidential election: Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Nevada, and New Hampshire. West’s highest vote totals were in Tennessee, where he got 10,256 votes, and Colorado, where he got 8,080 votes. Thus, West’s paltry turnout did not swing the outcome in either state: one went deep red for Trump, and the other deep blue for Biden.

Had West been on the Arizona or Georgia ballots in 2020, he could have wreaked havoc. Arizona went for Biden by a margin of 10,457 votes. In Georgia the vote was for Biden by a margin of 11,779. A few thousand votes for Kanye West could have flipped these states and might have changed who won the White House.

And what was Taylor Swift up to? Don’t worry, Swifties, it was nothing bad.  But if you’d like to learn more, then please read Corporatocracy or listen to my new radio show Democracy & Destiny.

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